Squid Game Director Is "Dumbfounded" by the Show's Success
Netflix recently announced that Squid Game has become the most popular television series with the streaming service making the announcement that over one hundred and eleven million people have dove into the deadly game. With the series quickly becoming a runaway success, perhaps no one is more surprised than the series' director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, who took the opportunity in a recent interview to touch on a number of different aspects of the big hit while teasing at the possibilities that might be present in a potential second season, which has yet to be confirmed.
Taking the opportunity to touch on the great success of his creation, Dong-hyuk expanded on the beginnings of Squid Game and how it was shuffled to the side when it wasn't picked up to series years prior:
"Well, one thing I want to clarify quickly is that there seems to be this common misunderstanding emerging that I wasn't doing anything else and just focusing on Squid Game for about 10 years, and this made us a blockbuster success somehow. But that wasn't really the case. In 2009, when it didn't work out for me to get the necessary investment for the initial feature film piece I was envisioning, I put Squid Game aside. And I went on to create three other movies, and all of those were successful. So, I mean, it's not like I didn't do anything else in between and then had this sudden blockbuster success. It's kind of been misconceived that way in some places, so I just wanted to clarify that a bit."
The director then expanded on the numerous emotions that he felt when his creation had become a worldwide success:
"A lot of hardship is ingrained in this show — but then it became a blockbuster worldwide success. So there have been a lot of different layers of feelings. Of course, I'm exhilarated about the success. And I'm dumbfounded that this could actually happen to a director like me. But then I am also reminded of the people that I was not able to pay attention to, or spend time with as much as I wanted to in the past. I had a girlfriend back then who I was not able to do very good things for, and we broke up right after I finished the original Squid Game script. So yeah, it's been a really complex experience that I've had — emotionally and memory-wise — after the success of Squid Game."
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